David French and the Work of the Spirit

How Galatians 5:13-25 Doesn't Mean Kindness Is Everything

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Paul_at_his_Writing-Desk,_by_Rembrandt.jpg

Bit late this morning because, well, because I’m holiday and I was up late stripping wall paper which, now that I’ve been doing it for a bit, I can say with authority is pretty satisfying. The key is to be liberal about the vinegar and water, not stingy, and to have a good book to listen to.

It is Sunday, as you might know, and I will be going to church shortly, and thus wandered over to the texts appointed for the day, and found this:

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Then I just glanced at X and found a glorious ratio. As it stands now there 875 comments and only 797 likes and it is being quote-tweeted all over the place. And justifiably so, for here is the Tweet, it’s by David French:

This is great news for The Dispatch. Nobody is better on fiscal policy than Jessica. Jessica and I recently had a great conversation about the grim realities of the federal budget on The Opinions podcast (link in next tweet)

Here’s the Dispatch’s official picture:

If you scroll just a little bit, you find what this person looked like before.

His name is Brian, not Jessica, and his wife and daughters look like sweethearts. It took the internet a minute and a half to dig up screenshots of David French using the platform of the National Review to explain, way back in 2018, why he wouldn’t call “Chelsea” Manning a woman:

And I think, as usual, that this is such an interesting moment, especially for Christians. I also am “utterly opposed to boorish behavior” its just that what counts as boorish behavior has been so altered that its hard to tell what is and what isn’t that sort of thing. And the text from Galatians rather neatly, I think, illuminates not so much how the alteration occurred, but rather the journey we’ve all been on, the kinds of friends people have been making along the way.

It’s so prescient, of Saint Paul, for example, to hone on the strange and complicated relationship of what he calls “the flesh” with not the human spirit, but the Spirit of God. Enduring life in “the flesh” is a tribulation and a sadness, for sure. We all have it, and Jesus came and took it up, so on the whole, we must say that the body, the flesh, is good no matter what I may feel at the end of a long day of scaping and peeling. But Paul is getting at something much deeper. And that is that the human spirit that resides in human flesh is always at war with God. So your flesh, your whole person, when it is opposed to God, will always try to “gratify” itself, will be full of indulgence and self-concern and often come across as a little precious.

The fact that the Spirit if God can also reside within the flesh of the human person, gradually conquering the heart, mind, soul, and body, clearing away the rubble of sin and death is the miracle that flows forth from the Tree of Life, where Jesus offered his body and blood to atone for ours. The Spirit if God “keeps you from doing the things you want to do.” When you begin to have the strength to say no to the flesh, it is not that you aren’t allowed to be comfortable in your body, or that you can’t have a second helping of roast beef and potato, or that you amass heaps of holiness points by wearing dowdy clothes. No, it is that the passions of this life that have hitherto bound you and kept you from being really happy cease to have power. The Spirit of God empowers you to say no to yourself in a good way. You may succumb to fits of anger, rivalry, sensuality, impurity, envy, enmity, and strife—indeed, you certainly will—but not in the existentially committed way that you did before. You will be less angry, less jealous, less idolatrous, and even less impure.

All this has been clear to Christians for simply ages, but lately, texts like this one in Galatians have become opaque to many believers because of a combination of mediocre Bible teaching, malign actors, and cultural confusion. Saint Paul names “dissensions” and “divisions” amongst the works of the flesh, which are, manifestly bad. But they are often taken out of this list of very bad things and joined to only one member of the next list—the manner of life that you are free to embrace. And that one gift, as I’m sure you know already, is “kindness.

Kindness, for people in the world of David French, is “utterly opposed to boorish behavior.” Kindness is that warm but vague sensation of not wanting to make anyone else uncomfortable. In the parlance of today, kindness is “everything.”

It should be easy to see how the ruse is carried out. By picking out the bad sins of division and dissension and vaunting the good virtue of kindness, somehow, many well-meaning people alive today manage to trip lightly over the rest of the list of works of the flesh, and therefore miss the full import of the fruit of the Spirit. For love, says Saint Paul elsewhere, never rejoices in wrong doing, and self-control, the least favorite of the Spirit’s generosity, bends the human will painfully to Christ’s and protects the believer from the heartbreak associated will all the works of the flesh.

I don’t have to receive a direct word from Saint Paul to be able to point out that the inclination and decision to say “she” about a person who is a “he” is not a work of the Spirit of God. I am not saying anything controversial when I implore you to remember that a man is not able to become a woman, and that a man, however fiscally conservative he might be, who decides to leave his wife and children because he wants to pretend to be a woman, is not “keeping in step with the Spirit.” It isn’t kind or loving or gentle or good to call him something other than he is—a man. It isn’t kind because it isn’t true. It means sending that person further along the road to perdition, rather than lovingly and kindly bringing him back to Jesus.

It’s easy to miss the alarming thing Saint Paul says at the very end of this text. “Those who belong to Christ Jesus,” he declares, “have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Crucifixion isn’t a comfortable experience. Mercifully, for us, it’s not literal. It is the spiritual work of the Spirit to cut away and destroy anything that harms the body and soul now and in the age to come. And when you put yourself into the hands of the Lord Christ, he literally does it for you.

So, seriously, go to church!